What Happened To Paul Mooney On Arsenio? [VIDEO]

Now for those of you who aren’t old enough to know who comedian Paul Mooney is and what his serious contributions to the world of comedy at large let alone black comedy are…allow us to educate you a little on the significance of this man’s quick wit and his ability to slice and dice others with his words. His thing has always been about race and educating those around him on the disparities between the races.

(Those of you who already know….just come a long for the ride and grab a few laughs along the way!)

Now, Paul Mooney is a comic that has written some of Black America’s most favorite jokes…yet he never had the opportunity to tell them. This was because he wrote them for some of the most celebrated comedians in our history.

For example he wrote a whole lot of Richard Pryor’s jokes not to mention writing for Redd Foxx and he has been a genius as it pertained to writing for film and TV. He wrote for the shows; Sanford And Son, In Living Color and Good Times. He was also a part of the team involved with the hit Hollywood Shuffle and Robert Townsend’s Partner’s In Crime.

His most notable recent cult classic though was The Chappelle Show.

Mooney has always been one to speak on race in his standup and his ability to be quick on his feet was part of the brilliance of him as a comedian. Let’s take a look at a few examples of what we mean below.

So, it was very confusing when Mr. Mooney went on the Arsenio Hall show and gave the following performance in the video below.

Mooney went on record as saying he was no longer going to use the word Nigga any more. But he supposedly called a black guy in the audience a,

“bald-headed nigga.”

One person who was there told TMZ… the crowd was stunned — and sat in awkward silence as Mooney tried to transition into different material.

TMZ reports that producers were scrambling to cut him off and end the segment but Paul ignored the cues and kept going until a crew member used the P.A. system to interrupt him and a staff member went on stage to tell him to wrap it up.

Eventually, Arsenio jumped in and helped end the segment in a respectful manner.

While everyone is more than entitled to a tough day, we are hoping that display wasn’t a greater indication of something wrong because Mooney truly didn’t seem himself. But unlike others we aren’t going to be quick to jump to conclusions as to what the problem was. We’ll just hope whatever it was is better now and wish him well because we want everything to be okay with Mr. Mooney. The man is most definitely one of our comedic phenoms and we don’t have many of those left….just saying.